According to residents on the south side of 14th Street between Second Avenue and Third Avenue, for several months, there has been a steady increase in e-bike delivery workers congregating as they wait to fulfill deliveries. (Residents acknowledged that this situation isn't unique to this EV block or even neighborhood.)
According to one resident who lives in a building here, "they are brazenly driving on the sidewalks, littering and congesting the walkways for residents, and blocking entrances to local businesses."
The resident went on to say that "the problem has gotten substantially worse." Despite filing complaints with 311 and calling the 9th Precinct and District 2 City Councilmember Carlina Rivera's office, "we haven't had much success."
The resident shared this video clip...
The residents say they're not trying to demonize the delivery workers who rely on their e-bikes to make a living, instead to find a solution for the burgeoning population of the city's deliveristas.
One solution hasn't garnered the necessary support. Local community boards (downtown and on the Upper West Side) have previously nixed plans from the Adams administration to open a rest and recharging facility for app-based delivery workers in former newsstands, as Streetsblog reported in March.
Meanwhile, GrubHub and JOCO, a company that makes rentable e-bikes, teamed up last summer to open "a rest stop" to help improve working conditions for delivery workers. The spaces offer safe places to recharge batteries and access restrooms.
There are now two — a small outpost on West 51st Street that can accommodate 15 people and one on 12th Street just west of Avenue A with a 75-person capacity.
The only real solutions is to get off you sofa and go to that restaurant and pickup your food. Convenience comes with a price not reflected in you credit card charge.
ReplyDeleteManhattan CB6, which covers the north side of the street, actually DID ask for one of those relief/recharging stations in their district, asking for proposals for sites + necessary funding. Resolution was from sometime in 2023.
ReplyDeleteIt was only the boards on the Upper West Side and Lower Manhattan which resolved against relief stations, but the sites proposed were miles from 14th Street. These ersatz congregating areas are all over the place (Astor Place seems to be one now) so it doesn't seem like the city needs to just add one or two to meet the needs, it needs to make a well-distributed network.
If the city has to spend any real money on this, some would propose that value capture is imposed on local businesses (since I don't think the usual self-organized collectives like BIDs are stepping up to pay for this) to fund the initiative. But that will squeeze restaurants even further on taxes/fees/fines. Ultimately the issue is that labor law at higher levels of government allows delivery app platforms to pretend its workers are not their workers, and the impositions should be directly on the platforms, with the help of any supportive legislation to get that done. From there, the companies could be compelled to actually have physical presences in the cities in which they operate, in order to provide the restrooms, break time seating and device recharging to their delivery employees that are needed. Since that is a long ways off and is going to be meddled by lobbying, the city needs to act sooner on near-term solutions. If the city doesn't act, workers will improvise, and bystanders will be irritated at how they use public space.
Manhattan sidewalks starting to look like burning man LOL
ReplyDeleteAgreed NN, if we really want to support local businesses call the shop directly, place your order, and pick it up. Apps like GrubHub and UberEats take local money and pump it straight back to silicon valley.
ReplyDeleteManhattan sidewalks are starting to look like a third world country.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of opinions on immigration or food delivery Apps etc, it is definitely a fact that there is a over-supply/glut of people seeking /attempting this work.
ReplyDeleteWhile physically grueling/stressful/low-paid, food delivery work is "easy" to get into as one needs almost no qualifications and as it turns out, not having ID or authorized work status is not an impediment either.
There is no way all those people will get work on any given day, so this area and others throughout NYC have become hangout/social spots.
BTW people who were delivering for years (before the Apps caught on, before the aslyum seekers came through the border)are understandably not happy that there are so many others now competing.
SO I guess that this same exact problem has been ongoing on 11th Street and First Ave is not an issue? Blocking my entry way every day, littering, loitering, dragging all kinds of random seating back to the corner, blocking business entrances, riding bikes on the sidewalk, and leaving all sorts of nonworking bikes in piles while killing the cement-trapped trees? Yea, it's a problem that we're all sick to death of. Does anyone care? Absolutely not. Is it making the property much harder to sell? Probably. I guess I should be happier about them, but I'm definitely not. Doordash and Grubhub understand that we do not need an overabundance of these folks on the street, but they collect the money and DO NOT CARE ABOUT NYC.
ReplyDeleteVarious City officials have suggested that “everyone “ orders food and anyone who “objects “ is “anti-immigrant “ .
ReplyDeleteBut my family does not order food delivery. Even if we wanted, we certainly can’t afford .
I don’t think that City streets should be prioritized for affluent people who get food delivery, who eat at restaurant sheds etc.
And not OK for bikes to be everywhere, people monopolizing the streets to hang out.
That clip shows a lot of bikes, but it is nothing compared to what it could grow into. Has anyone spent any time near the Shake Shake across from the Barclays Center? There are dozens of e-bikes out front in the street and on the sidewalk. It's hard to even walk the place by a lot of the time and so many of these guys just fly down the sidewalks around the neighborhood.
ReplyDeleteThe delivery companies should be compelled to rent places for their workers to hang out with the bikes.
ReplyDeleteSadly there are hangouts all over NYC these days.
ReplyDeleteLots of bikes parked in midtown
And also encampments etc. throughout NYC.
A really bad one in Astoria in a former Rite Aid building.
Media has just picked up the story though this started months ago….